About/Press releases/99designs.com Slips Past Dropbox and Tumblr to Take The People’s Voice Webby

99designs.com Slips Past Dropbox and Tumblr to Take The People’s Voice Webby

San Francisco

6 May 2010

BUSINESS WIRE -- The global Web community has voted 99designs.com as the Best Web Service & Application of the year in the Webby People’s Voice Awards. 99designs.com, the #1 marketplace for small business graphic design, passed Dropbox and Tumblr on the final day of voting to take the prestigious award.

“We hold Tumblr and Dropbox in extremely high regard. Like many millions of people around the world we use their services and love them, so we were incredibly humbled when we heard the news that we’d won,” said Matt Mickiewicz, Cofounder of 99designs.com.

To pull off the surprise upset, 99designs had to get the full support of its community at just the right time. The company rallied its community in the final hours of voting, promising that it would celebrate a Webby win with the entire 99designs team marching down a main street singing Queen’s We are the Champions and post it to YouTube for all to see.

“To be honest I never thought we’d have to sing, it’s just one of those things we threw out there to keep it fun for our community. They probably would have voted anyway, but perhaps a tiny part of their motivation was to see us totally embarrass ourselves,” said Mark Harbottle, Cofounder of 99designs.com. “In any case we are extremely grateful to our community and we now have a video to produce - the worst part is we can’t sing.”

99designs.com will be honored at a star-studded ceremony hosted by B.J. Novak of NBC’s “The Office” on June 14th in New York City. On June 15th, fans will be able to watch the ceremony, including 99designs’ five-word speech, at the official Webby Awards YouTube Channel.

"The Webby Awards honors the very best of the Internet," said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. "99designs’ win is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators."

Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by The New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile websites. The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 650-person judging academy whose members include Martha Stewart, R/GA's Chief Bob Greenberg, David Bowie, Arianna Huffington and Twitter's Biz Stone.

About 99designs.com

99designs is the #1 marketplace for small business graphic design. Its Ready-made logo store has thousands of high quality logos available for customization and sale right off the shelf for $99, while its Design Contest Marketplace enables businesses to quickly and inexpensively source custom logo design, web design, business cards or any other graphic design work by launching design projects to a global community of over 190,000 members. 99designs.com sees a new design uploaded every 7 seconds and pays out over $600,000 to its design community every month.

Hailed as the "Internet's highest honor" by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile web sites. Established in 1996, the 13th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide. The Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Sponsors and Partners of The Webby Awards include: Microsoft Expression; Aol; YouTube; Pepsi; Aquent; Yahoo!; Tribal DDB Worldwide; East Media; IDG; PricewaterhouseCoopers; 2advanced.Net; KobeMail; Museum of the Moving Image; Behance; Business Insider and Time Out New York.